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He has Hux shoved up against the pillows, one thigh on either side of Hux’s hips and one hand down the open fly of Hux’s jeans. His grip is a little dry, but Hux doesn’t seem to mind, since he’s clutching at Ben’s t-shirt and making little choked-off noises in the back of his throat. It’s only frustrating in the sense that Ben wants to hear them more, and they keep getting drowned out by the noise coming from the laptop open on the bed beside them, where a blonde lady with peach-colored nails is trying her absolute hardest to take a (stupidly large, Ben thinks) dick as far down her throat as she can manage.
He shifts, managing to hit the edge of the laptop with his knee so it spins away from them a little more, and presses his thumb hard up against the underside of Hux’s cock.
“Ben,” Hux hisses, turning his head. Ben nips at the soft, flushed skin of his neck. “Ben—”
“What,” he manages.
“Are you—” When Ben catches the edge of Hux’s bottom lip between his teeth and tugs, Hux’s voice cuts off. When he adjusts his grip and lets his palm graze the head of Hux’s dick, he can feel Hux leaking; it sends a dizzying sort of heat slithering deep into his belly.
“—aren’t you watching it,” Hux pants, when Ben releases his mouth.
“Why would I be watching it,” Ben says.
(Oh, yeah, choke me with that fat cock, moans the lady from the laptop.)
Hux frowns, pulling away so the back of his head smacks gently against the headboard. “I thought you liked it,” he says.
“I like this,” says Ben, and twists his wrist, and Hux makes a strangled noise, his whole body tightening up underneath Ben’s thighs, and Ben can’t tell, for a moment, whether it’s because of what he’s just said or whether he actually is really, really good at jerking other people off. When he leans in to lick a wet, warm stripe up Hux’s jaw, he supposes dimly that it doesn’t matter either way, since other people—well, it’s just Hux. That’s the point. It’s just Hux, red-faced and gasping against his throat and kneading a desperate handful of shirt against his shoulder.
It’s only Hux, he realizes, and kisses him again.
--
Hux goes home an hour later, his mouth still looking all bitten-up and incriminating.
“See you Wednesday,” he says, when he pauses at the front door, bookbag shouldered.
“Beat the shit out of them,” says Ben.
“It’s just chess.” Hux rolls his eyes.
Ben wonders if he should kiss him. His mom’s in the living room with no line of sight. He could do it.
“I’ll text you,” he says, instead.
“Obviously,” says Hux, looking at Ben like he might be a little dim. “Bye.”
“Was that Armie?” says his mom, stepping into the foyer as the door closes.
“Yeah,” he says.
“It’s Sunday, he didn’t want to stay for dinner?”
“Nah, he’s got—” He knows he’s slouching, avoiding her gaze like maybe he thinks she can read it on him, the way he’s been slowly eroding the cracks in his virginity with his best friend in a wild, terrifying rush. Maybe that thing has a kind of scent to it that she might recognize. “He’s got a tournament in the city, he leaves really early tomorrow.”
“Oh,” she says. And then: “You okay, honey?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll uh. Set the table.”
“Well, look at you,” she says.
--
After dinner he finds himself distracted. Maybe even more than usual. He’s got three paragraphs of an English essay left to write and the only thing he can do is lean back in his chair and stare out the window and watch the wind ruffling the leaves of the trees outside, casting the last of the spring blossoms into the dirt. The air smells hotter, longer, now. Spring’s expanding wider—the days are stretching out. He keeps thinking about all the times he’s watched Hux squinting into the midday sun, the times Ben has teased him for his freckles, for his sunburnt nose and shoulders, for the way he always seemed so out of his element in the raucous freedom of mid-summer. He wonder if maybe when school is out this year he can convince Hux to come to the beach with him and coax him under the docks. He wonders what Hux’s skin tastes like when it’s coated in salt and sunscreen. He wonders if Hux would let him—
He groans out loud, letting his chair tip forward so he can press his forehead to the cool surface of his desk, and he gives up trying not to think about it.
They’d been making out for nearly twenty minutes. Hux was half in his lap and Ben could feel his own thighs going numb, the sensation of it echoed in the tingling of his mouth, spit-slick and stinging when Hux had nipped at his lips with his sharp teeth. Ben had been hard, the heavy press of it starting to nag uncomfortably where the seam of his underwear dug into the fattening swell of his dick.
“We could,” Hux had said, pulling back. “If you wanted to, we could—”
“What,” he’d said. The pinked color of Hux’s cheeks was distracting; it was almost making him irritable.
“Put something on,” said Hux.
“Okay,” Ben said, and he’d watched Hux lean over and bend his head to type something into Ben’s laptop with his pale fingers (they might have been shaking, a little, he’s not sure anymore) and all he’d been able to think was a screaming, scorching litany of look at me look at me look at me while digging his fingers into the fabric of his sheets to stop himself from reaching out and grabbing Hux back into place over his hips, to stop himself from plucking viciously at Hux’s stupid starched clothing with both hands.
In the end he’d gotten Hux crowded up against the headboard, and the whole thing had been enough (it had been so much), that he’d even forgotten to wonder why Hux ever thought he’d want to see porn like that to get him hard when he could watch Hux actually come in thick spurts all over his knuckles, gulping at air like he was drowning.
--
“What’s up with you?” asks Phasma, at his shoulder. She slides onto the lunch table bench beside him.
“Nuff’n,” he says, around a mouthful of fries.
“You’re honestly super gross,” says Phasma. “Do you know that?”
Ben sticks his tongue out, fries and all.
Phasma punches him in the arm.
“Ow.” He thinks about punching her back, but both he and his ribs are still keenly aware of what happened the last time.
“You deserved that,” says Phasma, picking at her salad. “Where’s Hux?”
“Chess tournament,” he says.
“Nerd,” says Phasma, although it sounds sort of fond. “So did he stick his tongue down your throat yet?”
Ben chokes on his fries.
--
“Christ,” says Phasma. “Stop freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out,” says Ben, sucking on a terrible, hastily-rolled joint. He coughs. He is freaking out, a little. “I just didn’t think he told anyone.”
“So he did molest you,” says Phasma, leaning back on her elbows, ignoring him. She’s in the only patch of sun in the back stairwell of the parking lot, and Ben is trying not to too obviously pace back and forth on the concrete landing. “How was that, really? Did you tell him what a good boy he was and he just—” she waves a hand, suggestively “—jizzed all over himself?”
“Shut up,” says Ben. “You like him, why are you being like this.”
“He’s fine,” says Phasma. “But you two are bad for each other.”
“We’re not bad for—” Ben rolls his eyes, takes another drag. “Why do you care?”
“Ben,” she says, condescendingly. “He’s so obsessed with you.”
Something sort of funny tickles in his gut, when she says it.
“So?” he says.
“So,” she says.
“Are you telling me not to, like, 'fuck around with his dumb heart,' or whatever,” he exhales, feeling prickly.
“Christ, no,” Phasma says. “You do that all the time anyway.”
“I don’t,” he says.
“You do,” says Phasma.
He does. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe, yeah, I do.
--
come home soon, he writes into the text box, and then deletes it.
hux, he writes, and then deletes that too.
hey, he writes, and he sends that one.
Hello, Hux texts back, almost immediately.
phas knows, he starts to write, but deletes it and instead sends: how’s it going nerd
Well on my way to champion, texts Hux.
fuck yeah, he writes. cool.
how’s the city, he writes.
Hux takes a few minutes to respond, and then: Horrible. They’re making me share a hotel room with Dop.
gross don’t let him molest u in ur sleep lol
Hux sends him a picture of himself flipping off the camera. It’s blurry and badly angled, but Ben can see the outline of his sharp jaw and the slope of his nose and the severe little line of his lips behind his middle finger.
i can’t stop thinking about your mouth, he writes. He doesn’t delete it. But he doesn’t send it either. His thumb hovers over the little blue button. He leaves it there for the rest of the night, and in the morning when it’s still there, he rolls over in bed and jerks off to the thought of what Hux’s face would look like if he received it. The imperceptible darkening of his irises, the little flinch of pleasure. He deletes it all afterwards, slowly, letter by letter, with a slick of come still cooling on his belly.
--
After school he goes for a run down into the ravine. The air is still a little heavy with the late spring sun; he’s sweating through his t-shirt by the time he’s scrambled down the rough steps into the dirt path that circles around the marshland and delves into the woods. He goes the long way—up to the left into the shadows of the trees where the sun is hidden and the air goes cool again, where he can taste through the panting of his tongue the deep, thick rotting of the earth and the buoyant green of adolescent leaves and woody sapling bark. The insects are loud, here, shrieking in the twigs and in the long grass and echoing farther away also from the bog like they can feel the dusk approaching, heady and excited.
He stops to wipe at his face at the edge of the marsh, smelling stagnant pools and algae and the vague sweetness of reeds and bulrush sedge. He braces his hands on his knees, leans over the edge of the water where his reflection is muddy and rippled; he can see below it a string of black seedpearl frog eggs drifting lazily, curling into the mild current. It’s late in the season, he thinks. They might be dead.
He crouches there, picks up a long and brittle twig, pokes at the swirl of dark brown-green water with it, his chin resting on his folded arms. Somewhere in the tall grasses a coot bird calls out: threhh ehh ehh ehh. The spiral of eggs disappears into the stirred-up muck. He wonders, for a moment, how many tadpoles there were supposed to be. He wonders if they’ll try and pull down the beaver dam again this summer.
He remembers it was around this time last year, all that stuff with his mom’s Vicodin. The way Hux’s voice had sounded on the phone when he’d called him. It’d been late. Maybe three or four in the morning. Hux had sounded sleepy, startled. Ben thinks now maybe he remembers also the sound of sheets rustling through the tinny filter of the speaker, maybe he also remembers now the color of the sky through the window, bruise-black and fuzzy with clouds, maybe he also remembers now the sounds of birds cooing in the apple trees and squirrels scratching at the wet ground and worms in the soil and the sensation that he couldn’t move anymore but oh, he wanted to, and he was so scared. He’d taken—well, more than he should have. It had hurt, swallowing them all at once.
Ben?
Hey, he’d said. Hey, are you—can you talk.
Are you. Hux paused, for a long moment. To Ben it had stretched on forever like a line of hitching rope disappearing into the fog. He was slipping in and out of memories: the rope was Rhode Island—maybe he’d been eight or nine. They were whale watching. His dad had bought him a pair of binoculars.
Are you okay, you. You sound weird.
You’re weird, he’d said.
You’re slurring, said Hux. Are you high?
No.
Are you okay?
Mhm. I just—
There had been a long pause, again. He remembers sweating, feeling itchy and damp under his own skin. He remembers rolling onto his side and shoving the phone up against the pillow by his head like maybe Hux was there, just lying beside him in his twin bed, and so everything was going to be okay because Hux was a vicious little piece of shit and he hated most things in the universe and he’d never let anything happen to Ben if he could help it.
Should I—
No, I just. Can you talk.
We— He’d sounded so confused. (Ben was nauseous. He wanted to throw up, but couldn’t tell anymore which way was vertical.) We are talking?
Tell me, Ben had said. Desperate. Something gasping inside his head. He just wanted to hear Hux’s voice, no matter what happened next. He wanted Hux’s petty, stupid rage in his ear and he wanted to imagine the solid straightness of his body and he wanted to pretend he could feel the grip of Hux’s strong little fists on the collar of his t-shirt, telling him to get a fucking hold of himself. Tell me what you think about Hot Pockets.
The thought of it now makes his mouth twitch towards a smile. How easy it had been after all to comfort himself through the terror of maybe-dying (maybe by accident, maybe not) by coercing Hux into ranting on the injustices of living a proper, wholesome, American teenaged life. Tell me what you think about Hot Pockets. Tell me what you think about the Electoral College. Tell me what you think about pressed juice. Tell me what you think about social media. Tell me what you think about Thom Yorke.
(Tell me what you think about me—unsaid.)
A few hours later he’d felt capable enough to vomit. He stayed home from school by mimicking the flu. It wasn’t hard: his head was throbbing and his whole body ached with loss and cellular regeneration and the pain of still breathing, after everything. Hux came over later, skipping model U.N. so he could sit on the edge of Ben’s bed and do his math homework for him and not say anything about what had happened the night before except that Ben knew what it meant, the way Hux kept watching him when he thought Ben wasn’t looking: wary, keen, vigilant, and seething with heartbreak.
--
On the way home from his run he trips on a crack in the sidewalk by the bridge and scrapes his knee. He crouches on the curb and swipes asphalt gingerly from his sluggishly bleeding skin. He blows on it, wincing, onto the place where skin has curled away like torn chiffon in a patch about the size of a dollar coin, the color of it so raw and pink and revealing that a tightness curls strangely in his gut, hot and visceral.
The sting of it—it feels good.
--
come over, he texts.
I’m in class, Hux texts back, after a minute. Where are you?
i’m in study hall i meant after school asshole
I’ve got Chess, Hux texts.
so come over when it’s done christ
Fine, all right, Hux texts. Just keep whatever horrible neurotic terror is making you this needy bottled up until then. I have exactly 26 Xanax in my locker. Go wild.
i’m fine, he texts. He is. He’s fine. He just wants—he’s been thinking about it a lot. He chews at his bottom lip, glances up out the window and then thinks, finally: fuck it.
i was just thinking i could fuck you, he types, phone between his legs under the desk.
tonight i mean, he adds. He jiggles his knee a few times. after school
He shuts his phone off, shoves it back in his pocket, and tries not to think about what he’s just done. The room’s too quiet. He can hear Dameron’s shitty music all the way from the other side of the long desk, even through his headphones: tinny and muffled. Something is suddenly very tight in his chest; his hands feel clammy where he’s gripping his pen. He scribbles a crosshatch at the margin of his paper, just to have something to do.
He thinks about gathering his things up, stuffing them in his locker, going for an aimless run down around the track instead. He thinks about stalking down the corridor to the science labs and standing in the doorway making faces and rude gestures through the glass until Hux looks up with those stupid goggles on his face and rolls his eyes at him, with that dumb little smirk. But that doesn’t help the tight clench of his ribs inside his chest because then he’s thinking about Hux’s mouth, and that’s—well. He still has some feelings about it.
(Last week, the day after Hux had come back from the city, they’d been in his room with the door closed and downstairs he could hear the radio on in the kitchen, and the sound of his mother on the phone with his uncle while she scraped leftovers into tupperware containers and he’d had the backs of his thighs pressed painfully into the edge of his desk and his jeans open and tugged down to his hips and Hux had been on his knees in front of him with his thin, pink lips sliding down Ben’s dick and Ben had had two knuckles from one hand shoved between his teeth to keep from being too loud and three knuckles from the other hand pressed right up against the place where Hux’s mouth had been stretched like that, wet and hot and—)
He still has a lot of feelings about it, if he’s honest. He’s not sure what qualifies as too many feelings, in this case, but he feels like it might be getting there.
He thinks about going to the third floor bathroom and jerking off, just to get rid of the tension. He has a photo of Hux from that morning, stored on his phone—that morning four weeks ago when Hux had kissed him at school and then texted him at 3am, and then said a lot of things that were clearly sort of terrible and difficult for him, and Ben had—had what, had taken pity on him? That morning, when they'd gone later to the ravine. It’s embarrassing, somehow, that it makes him hard, that he’s been using it to. Get off to. Because it's just Hux in the weak, nascent sunlight, red and gold and pink and filtered through the dappled bridge of the trees over their heads, when they were standing by the edge of the marsh, and Ben had bitten a bruise into the underside of his jaw maybe fifteen minutes earlier, and when you squinted at the photo, you could see it, nestled against the fold of his black collar, because Hux had his head tilted just the right way.
His phone vibrates in his pocket. He starts, jerkily—almost knocking over a pile of books on the desk. Across the room, Dameron glances up and gives him a look like he’s just noticed Ben was there, and also in the way where he thinks Ben is probably an alien.
His hands are shaking when he digs his phone out, slides it open, clicks on the text from Hux.
Jesus, it says. Ben.
is that a yes, he texts. He’s grinning helplessly into his lap.
I’m in class, you absolute horrible fucking moron. What the fuck.
is that a yes, he texts again.
The three little dots flicker, disappear. There’s a beat, then they reappear again.
Yes.
--
“Ben!”
He turns from where he’s got his keys in the lock of his car to see Hux half-jogging toward him across the parking lot. The jolt of seeing him, suddenly, after the things he knows he’s texted him—it leaves him breathless, like the wind’s been knocked straight out of his lungs. He’d planned to go home, maybe jerk off once to take the edge off, rifle through his parents’ medicine cabinet and nightstand drawers for what they needed. He’d planned to absently scroll through YouTube watching Olympic 500-meter trials and cats being frightened by cucumbers while pretending he wasn’t anxiously waiting for Hux to text him and say he was headed over.
“I thought you said you had che—” he starts.
“I’m skivving,” says Hux. He sounds like he’s practiced saying this, somehow. It’s rushed, a choked little mouthful. His grip on the strap of his bookbag looks white-knuckled. “I’m fucking regional champion, I don’t need to submit to that embarrassment of a club literally every day.”
“Right,” says Ben, still reeling. “Sure.”
“Let’s go,” says Hux, and he opens the passenger door of Ben’s car and throws his bookbag into the back seat.
“Now?” Ben asks.
“No, later.” Hux rolls his eyes, sitting and tugging the seatbelt over his chest with maybe more force than is reasonably necessary. “Yes, now.”
“Okay,” says Ben. “Uh.”
His palms and fingers feel suddenly, overwhelmingly sweaty, like his keys might slip right out of his hand and betray him as he starts the car. When he leans back in the seat and shunts the car into reverse, he catches a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror: eyes bright like he might be fevered, pale with a bright swipe of color across his cheeks. His ears are burning. He wonders if maybe Hux feels the same faithlessness of his own body, right now; if Hux feels too like maybe his stomach is trying to crawl out of his gut and up through his ribs and throat. If Hux’s pulse is also hammering in his veins.
“Do we need—” Hux starts, and then shuts his mouth like something has ordered him to do it, frowning tightly out the window.
“Uh,” says Ben. “I mean. Yeah. I guess.”
“Okay,” says Hux. Ben dares a glance at him: the back of his neck is bright red, all the way from the downy copper-colored hairs on his nape to the top of his black starched collar. He’s not looking at Ben. “I’ll get it.”
--
He fiddles with the radio dial in the parking lot of the pharmacy while the car idles, jiggling his knee under the steering wheel.
Should I come—He’d said, when they’d pulled up.
Fuck no, said Hux, and he still couldn’t seem to meet Ben’s gaze, even when he’d twisted and reached around to grab his bookbag from the back seat. Just—I’ll be right back, don’t freak out.
“I’m not freaking out,” Ben mutters, now, to the dashboard, and flicks the dial to Hot-93, to Country-107, to FM94.4, Oldies and Goldies Coming Atcha Commercial Free Until 6:30! “I’m not,” he says, again. He flips the dial back to the top-40 station and tries to drown out the pounding of his own heart with whatever shitty rap-break is playing.
It’s starting to rain. Little droplets splatter haphazard against the windshield, and Ben flicks on the wipers, watching the slow rhythm of them swipe the water away in smooth stripes. He thinks about the way it’s been more than a little while since there’s been a good storm. Clear skies and and a little drying, the last few weeks. He thinks about the pregnant fullness of a heavy grey cloud, how good it must feel to let go of all that—accumulation. He thinks about the ravine marsh filling with feet and feet and feet of water until it swallows up the wood and the beaver dam and tickles the belly of the bridge and starts to slip into the streets, licking at driveways and car tires and drowning all the—
“Oh my god,” says Hux, opening the door and sliding back into his seat, clutching his backpack and a Drugmart plastic bag in his lap with both of his hands. “This song sucks, what is wrong with you.”
There’s rain in his hair, dampness speckled on his still-pink cheeks. Ben wants to lean over the gear shift and kiss him. But instead he just grins and turns up the volume.
--
“Where’s your, um.” Hux is standing in the middle of Ben’s bedroom like suddenly he’s not sure what to do with his body, like maybe he’s been dropped into an alternate universe and he’s never seen this place before. His bottom lip is pinched between his teeth, like maybe he’s about to start chewing on it. Ben’s given him a towel to dry his hair with but he’s just clutching it in one fist like he’s forgotten what it’s for.
“Mom’s working late,” says Ben. “Dad’s still on assignment on the West Coast until the end of the month.”
“Oh,” says Hux. “Okay.”
“Do you want—”
“Is that why you—”
Ben feels his face crack in a nervous grin. It feels lopsided, with all the wild energy warring inside his gut and his groin and thrumming under his skin. Hux doesn’t mirror the minor relief of it, doesn’t respond to Ben’s clumsy attempt at normalcy. His face looks hard and wary, all severe lines and forced bravery. Ben knows this look: the one that comes in the stead of panic, the warding off of the urge to lash out, to run. Sometimes it precedes bloody knuckles and shouting, sometimes only angry, bullish, unshed tears.
“Hey,” he says. He reaches out, into the meager space between them, and plucks the towel from Hux’s fingers. Drops it on the floor. He reaches out with his other hand, steps forward, snags at the strap of Hux’s backpack with the plastic Drugmart bag inside and he tugs it off Hux’s shoulder, drops that to the floor, too. It feels, strangely, a little like undressing him. Peeling off the outer layer.
“Hey,” he says, again. He cups Hux’s face with both of his hands; he watches the quiver of pale, translucent lashes. “Hux.”
“Oh my god,” says Hux, softly. “Shut up.”
Ben kisses him. Hux exhales through his nose, when Ben licks into his mouth, his eyes already shut. His skin of his jaw feels hot under Ben’s fingers, and there’s the damp tickle of his hair against Ben’s forehead. They do this often enough, thinks Ben. They do this a lot, now, they know how to do this, he tells himself. Hux’s hands are resting, lightly, on his shoulders, fingers fluttering like he’s still not sure of himself, but his mouth gives warmly; the tilt of his head into Ben’s palms has more confidence in it.
Ben presses forward with his hips and his chest, shuffling Hux backward until his calves press up against the side of the mattress. It takes a more insistent kind of kissing—teeth scraping against Hux’s lower lip, one hand sliding to cup the back of his head, threading into his damp hair—to get him horizontal on the bed, scooting back awkwardly toward the pillows until Ben has enough room to crawl over him, perched on all fours with what feels like a searing, roiling current of heat in the air between their bodies.
Hux pulls back; his hand where it’s fisted now in the front of Ben’s t-shirt has a force to it, like he’s still keeping Ben at bay, a little. He swallows, twists slightly in his upper body and reaches toward the desk where Ben’s laptop is sitting.
“What’re you—” Ben starts. He wants to snag Hux’s pale wrist and trap it flat against the mattress. “Hey.”
Hux’s eyes dart to Ben’s face and then away again. He pauses. “I thought—”
“I don’t want that shit,” says Ben. “I don’t need it.”
Hux flinches, imperceptibly. Like maybe Ben sounded harsher than he meant to.
“I don’t need it,” says Ben, again.
“Fine,” Hux huffs. His shoulders look tight again, his jaw works like he’s chewing. “I just thought.”
“What, that I need to see some boring-ass wet pussy porno to get hard for you?” Ben grabs at Hux’s chin and forces his face front. “That’s fucked up.”
“Look, all right—just because I’m the resident faggot here doesn't mean I automatically know what I’m doing,” Hux spits.
“Hey, don’t be a fucking dick,” snaps Ben.
“Fuck you.” Hux lifts his chin out of Ben’s grip, imperious.
“If you’re scared—” says Ben. He means to say: If you’re scared, it’s okay, we don’t have to, but Hux’s face suddenly twists, enraged, and he reaches out with both hands to grip at Ben’s ears, tugging him forward so they’re nose-to-nose.
“I’m not scared,” he says, a harsh whisper. “I’m fucking nervous, you asshole.”
After a beat, Ben laughs. He can’t help it. It burbles up out of him like a surprise: a sharp minute bark of laughter, at how wonderfully Hux’s vulnerable little bursts of spite can be the most incredible thing in the world to him, melting out the tension in his muscles and his ribs and easing the tremble in his hands. So he laughs, and then he’s kissing Hux again, as hard as he can.
“Mph,” says Hux, against his mouth, fingers still tight at the side of Ben’s skull. “Stop—stop trying to relax me.”
“Is it working,” he says, sliding his mouth down to suck on the underside of Hux’s jaw.
“No,” Hux moans, lying, and tips his head back against the pillows.
Eventually, Hux wrestles him out of his t-shirt and his jeans, and Ben gets Hux’s pants off and his shirt open so he can pinch experimentally at Hux’s soft, pink nipples while they pause to share the last of a joint that Ben had stashed in the bottom of his desk drawer. The smoke hangs benignly; floats aimlessly out the open window into the rain and the dusk. It’s not much of a high but Ben knows the gentle fuzz of it must be helping Hux, in the way that his eyes always get a little glassy and some of that hardness in his body seems to melt away, and in the way that it also finally seems to buttress him up into a braver space, here in this moment, shimmying out the rest of his shirt and his black cotton briefs and tugging Ben’s weight up and over his own body so he can reach down between them and wrap his warm, dry fingers around Ben’s hardening dick.
How, Ben wants to ask, even as he shoves his face into the sweaty crook of Hux’s neck, feeling bold enough to grip at the soft curve of Hux’s bare ass with one hand. How do you want me to—
But Hux seems to have thought about it: rolling onto his side and coaxing Ben up behind him, sucking two of Ben’s fingers into his mouth while Ben tries not to come, right there, with his hard dick pressed up against the small of Hux’s back and his nose buried in Hux’s hair, listening to the wet slide of Hux’s tongue on his skin. The soft suction of it, the slight graze of Hux’s teeth, it reminds him of how it felt when Hux was on his knees and trying to take him as deep as he could manage down his throat without choking.
“Fuck,” he whispers, against Hux’s nape.
Hux pulls Ben’s fingers free from his mouth, still gripping him at the wrist. “What,” he mumbles. Ben can feel the shaky exhale of his breath against his knuckles.
“Nothing.” He swallows, thickly. “Nothing, you just—you feel really good.”
He presses his hips forward, lets his dick rub into Hux’s crease a little, smearing dampness in the divot of his lower back. Hux shudders, a weak squirming against Ben’s body, and he pushes Ben’s hand down, behind himself, urging him. Ben tilts his own hips back and curls his spit-wet fingers between Hux’s cheeks, seeking.
“Here?” He swallows, probing a little. “Like this?”
“Yes,” Hux huffs. Ben can’t tell if it’s impatience or lingering nervousness, the edge to his voice. From behind him, he can see the curve of Hux’s cheek still flushed bright red, the fan of pale lashes like his eyes are squeezed shut.
It’s really tight. Hux’s body is still too rigid, protective, when he presses the tip of one damp finger against the furl of Hux’s hole and pushes in, experimentally. It’s so tight, and hot too, almost suffocating. He presses his forehead to Hux’s shoulder and watches where his hand is pressed into the crease of Hux’s ass, seeing his own dark-flushed erection where it’s standing hard up against his stomach and he suddenly feels a little delirious, with the knowledge that he’s going to try and fit all of that up there, where even one finger feel like it might be too much.
“Jerk yourself off,” he says, and he nudges with his finger again—still too tight. “C’mon.”
Hux turns his head, slightly, his whole body still braced suspiciously against the mattress.
“C’mon,” says Ben, again. “I wanna watch you do it.”
That does it. He’s realizing now that that always seems to do it. The flush on Hux’s face spreads all the way to his neck and shoulders and maybe even his chest, although Ben can’t see from where he’s propped up behind Hux’s back. He watches Hux move his arm, tucking it up against his side; he watches Hux’s elbow move, a little tentatively, as he starts to fuck into his own loose fist.
“Feel good?” Ben murmurs, licking at Hux’s ear and trying for another finger.
“Shut up,” Hux mutters, spine arching. “Ah—yes.”
It helps. He can feel how it helps—it’s amazing to him that he can feel it, the way Hux starts to relax against him, around him; the way he can eventually get the tips of two of his fingers inside him. Hux’s breathing is sharper now, exhales like little bitten-off hisses, and Ben mouths at the skin of his neck, nips at his shoulder.
“Get the stuff,” he says.
Hux startles, like maybe he’d been dropping out of reality a little and Ben’s voice has snapped him back. He swallows—Ben feels it against his cheek when he presses his face into the curve of Hux’s throat—and then pushes off from Ben’s body and leans over the edge of the bed to rummage in his backpack.
Ben’s fingers slip free, but he lets his hand rest on Hux’s ankle, leaning back a little so he can admire the sheer nakedness of him: his long skinny legs, his pale, freckled ass just on display, like that. Ben’s fingers twitch with the urge to grab at it, knead it, to maybe slap it a little, like he knows people do a lot in porn. Hux still has one sock on—and somehow that’s the detail in this whole shaky tableau that makes Ben’s stomach do a funny, weak little flip.
Hux turns back and shoves a small, clear bottle into Ben’s hands, biting at his lip. Ben can see now how hard he is, how the tip of his dick is glistening, how the pink flush of his skin travels all the way from his chest to his upper thighs.
“How d’you—” Ben asks, suddenly dry-mouthed, fingers gripping tight around the little bottle.
Hux doesn’t answer: he just turns over in the sheets and gets himself onto his hands and his knees, his head hanging down between his shoulders, hair now undone from its usual slick and grazing the pillow.
“Shit,” says Ben, quietly.
“Come on,” Hux mutters.
The lube makes hilarious, gross squelching noises coming out of the bottle and coating his fingers. He can’t help but laugh a little again, a helpless dumb giggle, when he gets up onto his knees and leans over Hux’s body, bracing himself on one hand, the other slipping between Hux’s crease and pressing into him.
“Stop laughing,” Hux says. “Ah—”
“No,” says Ben.
“Fuck you,” says Hux. “Fuck, ah—don’t. Fuckohmygod.”
It's the feeling of two of Ben’s fingers slipping all the way in, that pushes the slurred little curse out of him in a startled rush. Ben feels himself marveling at it, just how much easier it is now, how it feels even better, how even the slick, wet noises of the lube seem to make it even hotter.
“Feel okay?” he asks, pumping his wrist, trying it out.
“Yes,” Hux hisses.
“Doesn’t hurt?”
“N-no.”
“You want more?”
“Oh my god.” Hux bows his spine, slipping onto his elbows, his red face pressed into the pillows. “Ben, stop talking.”
“Nope,” says Ben. He spreads his fingers, a little, feeling the hot stretch of Hux’s body around the slight ‘v.’ “No way.”
“I hate you,” Hux moans.
“Yeah, big talk,” Ben murmurs, and presses his mouth to the jut of Hux’s shoulder blade.
He gets to three fingers, and Hux is finally rendered speechless. He’s got one hand fisted in the pillow by his head, hiding his face in his forearm, breath hitching. He seems to like it when Ben curls his fingers, when Ben corkscrews them up inside, when Ben presses his thumb up against the rim of his hole. He seems to like it when Ben sits back onto his heels and puts his other hand on the curve of one of his cheeks, spreading him wider so Ben can watch what he’s doing.
“Ready?” asks Ben, just rubbing gently with his thumb when he’s pulled his fingers free.
Hux seems to like that too. “Jesus,” he whispers, his silly accent all strung out and a bit reedy. “Fuck, okay.”
It’s pretty obscene, he thinks, it’s totally, totally, crazy filthy—watching himself get his own cock slick after he retrieves the bottle from the sheets and tips it into his palm again, with Hux still bent over in front of him like some sort of offering he doesn’t deserve, panting, waiting—he grunts, when his dick swells noticeably in his hand, fully hard and straining again, the lube pushing through his fingers.
“Fuck,” he whispers. His balls are already so tight.
“What?” Hux turns and lifts his head, a little, from the pillow.
“It’s just—a lot,” Ben mutters, gripping himself at the base of his cock and trying not come right there on the spot when he sits up on his knees and presses the head of it up against Hux’s slicked-up, pink hole.
“Hffng,” manages Hux, in agreement, shoving his face back into the pillow like it’s somehow safer, less arousing, less a lot, if he’s just drooling into the sheets.
The breach—how tight it is, how hot, the fucking look of it—it nearly makes him nearly lightheaded. He can hear himself exhaling, noisily, through his nose; he knows his thighs are already shaking with the need to go slowly. He gets about halfway in and feels Hux clench down on him hard, his hips bucking, like it’s involuntary.
“Shit,” he snarls.
Hux chokes, and freezes, panting.
“Okay?” he manages.
Hux’s head dips, like he’s rubbing his face against the pillow. He exhales, long and slow: Ben can feel it underneath his palms where he’s gripping at Hux’s hips.
“It hurts,” says Hux, finally. Like he’s barely found his voice again.
It shouldn’t—he knows it shouldn’t, he shouldn’t feel fucking aroused by Hux’s pain—but it makes the tight ball fire inside his gut flare up. He can feel his dick pulse hotly where it’s half inside Hux’s body.
“Sorry, sor—”
“Shut up,” Hux groans. “Don’t. Don’t fucking—just. Just do it.”
And oh god, it feels good. It’s not even that he's being allowed to let go, to go ahead and push his cock all the way inside until his hips are flush with Hux’s ass, lube smearing messily onto his thighs and in the dark curls of his pubic hair, but Hux telling him to just do it, to just stop worrying, stop pretending, stop thinking like he isn’t allowed to take exactly what he wants from the world and to fucking enjoy himself while doing it. He knows he’s not going to last, not long at all, not with that hot thrill of power and permission coursing all the way up his spine and Hux bowed and gasping underneath him like he loves it, like Ben is giving him exactly what he’d dreamed about, for years and years and years—
“Shit,” Ben gasps, throat raw. He spreads Hux’s cheeks wide with the flat of his palms so he can watch the way his dick disappears inside Hux’s hole, like Hux’s whole body is swallowing him up. “Shit, Hux—I’m, I’m fucking inside you.”
Hux whines like he’s choking. His body clenches with a shudder, and that’s it—Ben is coming. It feels white-hot and spiraling, like he’s been punched in the side of the head, like he’s just fallen off the side of a cliff, like he’s just let go after hanging by his fingertips over some wide and black abyss for days and days, and it doesn’t even matter what’s going to happen when he hits the ground.
Hux is twitching underneath him, when he comes back to himself. He feels light all over, inside all of his loose muscles and fluid bones, and everywhere that Hux’s sweaty skin is stuck to his feels amazing, oversensitive.
“Ben—” Hux starts, trying to extricate himself, maybe, from where Ben is collapsed over his back, crushing him. His voice still sounds desperate, reedy, on edge.
“Wait. Hold on, just—” Ben swallows, managing to push himself back to sitting on his heels between Hux’s thighs, watching as his softening dick slips out of Hux’s body and slaps wetly against his own leg. His heart is still pounding in his chest, and he's momentarily captured—mesmerized—by the picture of his own come leaking out of Hux’s hole. He reaches out and rubs at it, slicking it around the puffy, pink skin, with the pad of his thumb. Hux hisses softly, into the sheets.
“Ben,” he says, again.
“Shit, come here.” Ben grabs him by the waist and flips Hux over onto his back, suddenly feeling even through the glaze of his own orgasm and the heady scent of sweat and rain-dark earth that seems to be everywhere in his bedroom the difference in size between them in a way that finally seems to matter. He’s going to be bigger than Hux, he feels, he knows. He’s already bigger than him, stronger. He likes it—he’ll be able to do all these sorts of things to him. The kinds of things that Hux likes.
He wraps his right hand around Hux’s red, straining dick, jerking him roughly. It feels wild, half-inspired, when he tugs Hux closer to him by the waist and shoves Hux’s legs open wider at the knees, pressing two fingers of his left hand to his wet, stretched-out hole, and rubs there again at the sensitive rim of it in firm, hard circles.
“You like that,” he says, voice cracking. “Yeah, you—you like that, that’s what you want, huh?”
Hux sobs.
“God, you’d—” he can’t seem to stop talking, can’t seem to stop wanting, taking. “You’d let me do anything to you, wouldn’t you, fuck, fuck, you love this—”
Hux chokes out something wordless, helpless. His whole body is heaving, twisting like maybe he’s trying to get away out from under Ben at the same time his hips cant desperately closer, his fingers clutching in the pillows by his head. His red little face is all screwed up, his mouth open and slack and wet.
“Slut,” says Ben, and he slides his two fingers back up inside him, all the way to the hilt of his palm.
Hux’s eyes fly open in shock, and then suddenly he’s coming, spurting wet and hot all over Ben’s fingers and onto his own red, flushed chest. Ben can feel the clench of Hux’s body from the inside, where he’s got him speared like a pinned-down bit of fluttering prey; the shuddering clutch of it makes him dizzy.
Hux’s pulse is still racing several minutes later. Ben can feel the harsh pattern of it under his cheek, where he’s flopped down over Hux’s thighs and belly, letting himself press his face into the awkward space between Hux’s ribs. He thinks Hux’s come might be in his hair.
“I’m going to fucking beat you up,” says Hux, eventually. He sounds like someone’s scraped his throat raw, hoarse with exertion and maybe something else, too. “I can’t believe you called me a slut.”
Ben grins, dopey, into Hux’s skin. “No you’re not,” he says, muffled.
“What?”
He lifts his head, props his chin up on Hux’s sternum. “No, you’re not. Going to beat me up.”
Hux squints down at him. His face is still flushed bright pink, mottled all the way down his neck and over his collarbones. Ben can feel the steadying thrum of his heartbeat through his skin. His eyes are suspiciously bright, in the dimness. “Well, not right now,” he concedes, finally. “Later.”
“Sure. Whatever you say,” says Ben, and kisses a freckle on Hux’s ribcage. “Slut.”
Hux punches him in the shoulder.
--
He hears his mom come home some time just after 1am. He hears her drop her keys in the dish by the front door, hears her heels on the kitchen tile floor, the sound of the fridge opening. He can’t sleep, even though his entire body feels blissed-out and raw; there’s a wild tense energy that’s keeping him awake in his own bed, Hux curled up and dead to the world against his side under the sheets, breathing slowly.
It’s raining harder now. He can hear it out the half-open window: the steady shhhhhhh of the water streaming down the gutters in the street and the harder thrumming of the raindrops on the roofs of the houses and into the branches of the trees. The air smells wonderfully wet and a little cool, bracing and clean. Above them, the smattering of glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling shines weakly. Ben remembers the time last fall he tried to scrape them off with his dad’s paint spackler and got distracted halfway through because Hux kept texting him about the A- he got on his history paper about mutually assured destruction.
That paper was brilliant, he’d said. That was an A+ paper.
that paper was straight up crazy dude, Ben had texted back. but mr wedge’s a fucking jerk
He hears his mom come up the stairs, hears her pause just outside his room. She’s checking if the light is off, he knows, and there’s a wild thrill that curls suddenly in the pit of his stomach at the liminal, weak barrier of his bedroom door as the only thing between her and her ignorance and this weird, terrifying, incredible fucking thing that has just happened to him.
He presses his mouth to the top of Hux’s head. His hair smells like pomade and sweat. He grins: feeling stupid, giddy, too big for his own skin.
How could it be bad, he thinks, recalling Phasma in the parking lot that day, calling them bad for each other like she knew what it was like. How could it be bad if you think you need something so much because it might be the only thing keeping you alive.
He wonders if tomorrow will feel any different.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, though, he thinks, a little more drowsy now with Hux’s damp breath on his neck and Hux’s soft mussed hair in his mouth and the whole warm entirety of Hux’s naked body pressed up against his side. Maybe it’s not up to him. Maybe it’s that the rain will wash everything away, he thinks, in the night. Maybe it’s that the earth will be scraped raw and bare-skulled but he won’t even notice, he thinks, because he’ll be the same as everything else: gasping and new.